Author: News Room
Chinese manufacturers are flooding TikTok and other social media apps with direct appeals to American shoppers, urging people to buy luxury items straight from their factories. And amid the threats of sky-high tariffs on Chinese exports, Americans seem to be all in.The pitch in the videos is that people can buy leggings and handbags exactly like those from brands like Lululemon, Hermes and Birkenstock, but for a fraction of the price. They claim, often falsely, that the products are made in the same factories that produce items for those brands.American influencers have embraced the videos, promoting the factories and driving…
The Chinese are trolling the Trump administration.A YouTuber who used to make parody music videos about the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, produced “The Song of MAGA,” a satire of President Trump’s vision for the United States.A nationalistic TikToker who whitewashes China’s persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang made a video mocking Vice President JD Vance’s purported use of eyeliner in full drag fashion while demanding an apology for a comment Mr. Vance had made about “Chinese peasants.”In a post on the social media platform RedNote, a video of Mr. Trump admiring a portrait of himself at the Justice Department is accompanied…
Arthur Fleischer Jr., an art-loving lawyer who for decades was one of the leading deal makers in corporate mergers, died on March 21 at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.The death was confirmed by his wife, Susan.Over a 65-year career at the firm that became known as Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where he eventually served as co-chairman, Mr. Fleischer became one of the top practitioners of the business of mergers and acquisitions, playing a role in a number of major transactions.Perhaps his highest-profile assignment was advising what was then Philip Morris in its unsolicited takeover bid of…
As Elon Musk sought to reassure Wall Street analysts on Tuesday that he would soon scale back his work with the federal government, the strain of his situation was audible in his voice.The world’s richest man said that he would continue arguing that the Trump administration should lower tariffs it has imposed on countries across the world. But he acknowledged in a subdued voice that whether President Trump “will listen to my advice is up to him.”He was not quite chastened, but it was a different Mr. Musk than a couple months ago, when the billionaire, at the peak of…
How do you process the death of a world figure like Pope Francis? With prayers, rituals and, apparently, movies.Streaming minutes for the 2024 Oscar-winning film “Conclave,” which explores the Byzantine process of selecting a new pope, jumped this week after the news of the pope’s passing, according to the tracking firm Luminate. Viewership also jumped for Netflix’s 2019 picture “The Two Popes.”Even before Amazon Prime Video made “Conclave” available at no extra cost to subscribers on Tuesday, the film’s total daily U.S. streaming viewership jumped on Monday to 6.9 million minutes watched, compared with 966,000 the previous Monday. On Tuesday,…
The deadly crash of a sightseeing helicopter in New York City on April 10 has left many people wondering how safe such tours are.Commercial sightseeing helicopters take visitors places other tours can’t: deep into the Grand Canyon, to a hidden waterfall in the mountains of Oahu, high above New York, serving up breathtaking views with a dose of adrenaline.The tours are popular; sightseeing helicopters are part of a multimillion-dollar industry in the United States. In New York alone, the city’s heliports generate a “total economic impact” of $78 million a year, according to the Economic Development Corporation.But sightseeing helicopters can…
After weeks of bluster and escalation, President Trump blinked. Then he blinked again. And again.He backed off his threat to fire the Federal Reserve chairman. His Treasury secretary, acutely aware that the S&P 500 was down 10 percent since Mr. Trump was inaugurated, signaled he was looking for an offramp to avoid an intensifying trade war with China.And now Mr. Trump has acknowledged that the 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods that he announced just two weeks ago are not sustainable. He was prompted in part by the warnings of senior executives from Target and Walmart and other large American…
For a president who advertises himself as a paramount deal maker, the next 11 weeks will be a pivotal test, as his advisers race to accomplish what no other administration has done before and reach dozens of individual trade deals with other governments.President Trump has promised big gains for American trade, and officials from Japan, South Korea, India and elsewhere have been pushing for agreements as they look to forestall punishing tariffs. But trade experts say the administration has set up a seemingly impossible task, given that traditional trade deals typically take months or years to negotiate.Mr. Trump has tried…
The flashy online announcement called it “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World,” a chance to have “an intimate private dinner” with President Trump at his members-only golf club in Virginia, followed by a tour of the White House.A seat would be reserved for each of the top 220 investors in $TRUMP, a cryptocurrency that President Trump launched on the eve of his inauguration. In an astonishing escalation of the Trump family’s efforts to profit from cryptocurrencies, a website promoting Mr. Trump’s so-called memecoin announced on Wednesday that the coin’s largest buyers would be invited to meet with him. The…
Jason Citron, a co-founder of the popular social chat app Discord, stepped down as the company’s chief executive on Wednesday, a significant management shake-up ahead of Discord’s potential public offering.The new chief executive will be Humam Sakhnini, a 15-year veteran of the video game industry, Mr. Citron said in a statement. Mr. Sakhnini was previously the vice chairman at Activision, the gaming publisher behind titles like Call of Duty and Candy Crush.Discord is in talks to go public as early as this year, and was valued by private investors in 2021 at roughly $15 billion. The app is especially popular…